1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a clock device having a clock circuit to generate time data of "hour", "minute" and "second", and an operational circuit to perform required time operations based on the time data. More particularly, it is concerned with a clock device capable of preventing a time delay in the time data outputs from occurring due to the operational time in the operational circuit.
2. Description of Prior Art
It has heretofore been a practice to take out from the clock circuit, as the time data, "hour", "minute" and "second" signals, or those signals generated at the time of change in "day", "hour", "minute", and "second".
For example, at the instant of changing from "23 o'clock 59 minutes 59 seconds" previous day to 0 o'clock 00 minute 00 second" next day, there are simultaneously produced the "hour", "minute" and "second" signal outputs of "0 hr. 00 min. 00 sec.", or there are sequentially produced changing signal outputs accompanied by operational time delay in the clock circuit per se at the time changing instant in the order of the "second" change, "minute" change, "hour" change and "day" change. When the time alarming is to be performed by the operational circuit using such time data, the operational circuit executes the time alarm operation after it receives the time data, and produces the result of the operation as an output. Incidentially, when the alarm is to be established with respect to a number of hours in the operational circuit, the abovementioned time data are sequentially compared with a number of alarm time data to judge coincidence or non-coincidence in each comparison. As a consequence, a lengthy time period is required for the sequential comparison and operational processings with the result that a delay inevitably occurs in the alarm output during the operational time. This delay time becomes greater as the number of the alarm hour data to be compared increases, which is liable to cause various troubles and inconveniences. A solution to such disadvantage has therefore been longed for.